Darshana #3 of 6 · c. 4th century CE (text); tradition far older
सांख्य
Sankhya Darshana
Sāṃkhya
Founder: Maharshi Kapila
Root text: Sankhya Karika (of Ishvarakrishna) (सांख्यकारिका)
Central thesis
Reality has exactly two ultimate principles: purusha (pure conscious witness, plural) and prakriti (unconscious, threefold-guna material nature). All suffering arises from purusha mistaking itself for prakriti; liberation is the clear discriminative knowledge (viveka) that they are forever distinct.
Summary
Sankhya is the oldest of the six darshanas and the metaphysical foundation on which both the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali's Yoga build. Its name means "enumeration," because it counts out the 25 tattvas — twenty-four evolutes of prakriti plus the witnessing purusha. From the unmanifest prakriti, when its three gunas (sattva, rajas, tamas) lose equilibrium, mahat (cosmic intellect) emerges; from mahat, ahamkara (ego); from ahamkara, the eleven sense organs, the five subtle elements, and the five gross elements. The purusha never acts and never changes — it merely witnesses. Bondage is the false superimposition of agency onto the witness; moksha is kaivalya, the isolation of pure witnessing consciousness from all material evolutes.
Key concepts
- ●Purusha–prakriti dualism (consciousness vs matter)
- ●25 tattvas (cosmological evolutes)
- ●Three gunas — sattva (clarity), rajas (activity), tamas (inertia)
- ●Viveka (discriminative knowledge) as the means of liberation
- ●Kaivalya (isolation) as the goal — distinct from theistic moksha
Accepted pramanas
Means of valid knowledge
- · Pratyaksha (perception)
- · Anumana (inference)
- · Shabda (verbal testimony)
Liberation path
Kaivalya — the isolation of the witnessing purusha from prakriti, attained by viveka-khyati (discriminative discernment of the categories).
Key texts
- · Sankhya Karika of Ishvarakrishna
- · Sankhya Sutras (attributed to Kapila)
- · Yuktidipika
- · Tattva Samasa
Modern relevance
Sankhya's purusha–prakriti–guna framework is the working vocabulary of the Bhagavad Gita, Yoga Sutras, and Ayurveda — every modern Hindu treatise on consciousness, mind, or constitution inherits it.